What Lurks Beneath?

Rise of the Fish-Men

House Rules

I wanted to summarize our house rules, as they are quite different from textbook ToC.

(1) Points (of general abilities) buy extra dice, instead of adding to a roll; take the highest die rolled, and additional sixes add 1 each to the total (i.e., 3 sixes give you a total of 8). As in ToC, decide on your point spend before rolling.

(2) Chips: one chip adds +2 to a roll, or can be used to reroll any or all dice. Chips can be spent after the roll. Chips are earned for entertaining in-character roleplay, especially for roleplaying your drive.

(3) Combat options:

A simple attack. Using Scuffling, Weapons, or Firearms as appropriate roll equal to or higher than the opponent’s hit threshold, then roll damage, which is 1d6 modified by weapon type. This is textbook ToC, except that weapon damage is a little different: -2 for untrained, unarmed attacks; -1 for unarmed attacks if you have at least 4 points of Scuffling, or armed attacks with clubs or small blunt weapons; 0 for knives and small weapons, +1 for small caliber firearms and larger blades, and +2 for large caliber firearms like shotguns, and damage from small monsters.

Called Shot: to hit a particular spot on an opponent’s body; -2 or -3, depending on what you’re aiming for.

Grappling: to grab and hold someone who’s actively fighting you, make an opposed roll, Scuffling vs. the opponent’s Athletics or Scuffling, their choice. Success means you’ve grabbed them; they cannot attack until they get free of the hold, which requires an opposed roll as above. This takes an entire action, unless they win with a 6 or higher, in which case it’s a free action.

You can instead choose to grab a weapon arm (or a weapon itself, if it’s big like a staff), preventing them from attacking with that particular weapon. To do this just takes a Scuffling check against the opponent’s hit threshold. The opponent can still attack with another limb. To free their held limb (or weapon), the opponent needs to make an opposed roll as above.

Disarm: there are two ways to disarm: (1) Grappling: first, use one action to grapple the opponent or grab the weapon arm; then use another action (usually next round) to make an opposed Athletics or Scuffling or Weapons (your choice) roll vs. the opponent’s Athletics or Scuffling or Weapons (their choice). If you win their weapon falls to the ground, unless you win with a 6 or higher in which case you can take the weapon. (2) Striking: make a called shot at -2 to hit the weapon arm, and roll damage; then the opponent needs to make an opposed roll vs the damage to hold on to the weapon. This uses just one action. Also, this option always knocks the weapon away, i.e., you don’t ever grab it from them.

Throw, trip, or leg sweep: make an opposed roll (Scuffling [or Weapons, if appropriate] vs. Athletics or Scuffling); success means the opponent falls down and takes 1d6 – 2 damage. It takes one action for the opponent to get back up. Attacks while on the ground suffer a -2 penalty, and their hit threshold goes down by 1 while on the ground.

Other Maneuvers: the same basic strategy of fighting ability or athletics vs. fighting ability or athletics applies if you want to do something else other than causing damage, like pushing, distracting (“look over there!”), etc. A success usually means the opponent is inconvenienced appropriately for one round, or lowers their hit threshold for one round, or raises your own or someone else’s hit threshold temporarily, and so on. Just describe what you want to do and your humble GM will work it out :-)

Automatic Weapons: these allow you to take up to 3 shots per round. If firing two shots at either the same or different targets, or if firing three shots all at the same target, the hit threshold goes up by one; if firing three shots at multiple targets, it goes up by 2. Rolling a 1 means you’re out of ammo and have to reload; rolling 2 ones means the weapon is jammed and can’t be used until repaired.

(4) Consciousness Rolls: the rules as written, with the difficulty equal to the absolute value of the current health, doesn’t work for our new way of rolling dice, and was a borderline broken rule to begin with. Instead, you need to make a consciousness roll at -6 health or below with the following difficulties:

-6 or -7 health: your TN = 4

-8 or -9 health: your TN = 5

-10 or -11 health: your TN = 6

That’s all I can think of for now. All in all, i think these rules provide more options, more variety and just plain more fun :-) Opinions?